I wanted to inform you before leaving Italy about the things I am doing for sourceinstall at the moment, and give a (vague) idea of probable future changes.

In CVS I am of course fixing small bugs and restructuring code, but I am also experimenting and playing with these new functionalities for the next version (from pointless to more important)

a currently rough, experimental, slow binary tarball export function.

some estetic changes (but I would really need help on this, because I use GUIs so seldom).

more documentation in the manual (expecially FAQs)

package information export functions: from the GUI it will be possible to extract all information about currently known packages, and export it as XML, plaintext or an "installed files list" plaintext. This will be some sort of novice-oriented GUI-driven interface for other programs and users.

begin cleam separation of tk interface code from functionality

You can expect(1) these things to stabilize into the 0.5 release in some time.

For the next cycle and beyond I am considering more things. Here's a couple, these are ideas that could get implemented so, or in a different way, or not, there's nothing definitive yet.

provide full cmdline support for sourceinstall. This means that sourceinstall will be usable at different levels: the experienced will have an alternative cmdline mode of operation with same functionalities of the GUI (maybe a little more customizable), where execution can be automated completely (no popups or other decision making during installation, for example). Using sourceinstall as command line only will not require Tk, or a running X11 server. The scripts could come separate (sourceinstall / tk-sourceinstall) or merged together.

provide remote installation (https?) From a web browser it will be possible to manage packages on another machine where a sourceinstall daemon is running. This could even involve interface proxying (for example, tk GUI->screenshot->HTML map on the client). Otherwise, a normal dedicated web app can be done.